Excessive Raid Wipes

Let's say that a regular group does the same 10 man for a couple of months and only downs the second boss once. What is the point at which you, as a raid leader, should make changes?

The issue is this, we have been running ToT for several weeks and have not made it past Horridon. We are at 60 - 70 wipes. Usually due to tank not keeping threat or healer not keeping tank alive. DPS has their share of mistakes as well but a DPS getting whacked isn't a show stopper usually. I guess I feel like by the 20th wipe you should have the fight down.

I would never even get close to 60 wipes before deciding to change things. After 10 wipes I'd seriously start to look at who's at fault, replacing people, get people to gear up more, etc.
But lucky you, 20% nerf next week with the patch. (;

We are at 60 - 70 wipes. Usually due to tank not keeping threat or healer not keeping tank alive.

idk about a specific number of total wipes. I prefer to fix specific problems as they arise. IE: after the 2nd or 3rd time a tank failed to keep threat... If a tank can't even keep threat, I would be looking very closely at death logs before blaming healers for his deaths. A tank who can't keep threat probably doesn't do a much better job of keeping his active mitigation up either.

What kind of a raider are you? Casual, semi-hc/hardcore?
What about your guild?

For a casual guild i would say around 40 wipes on a normal boss is probably somewhere you should be worried and try changing stuff. Depends how much progress you actually make...

For someone on a semi hardcore lvl - i would judge pull by pull, if you died on the first pull of a boss due to tank threat, make sure it's known early on... If it happens every attempt for 10 more attempts, obviously something needs to change with the tanking.

N Horridon was very overtuned but with the nerfs it's sad to hear guilds still struggle with it.. If it's tank threat all i can suggest is to make sure your dps and healers are stacking at a side w/ the Add tank, using MD would help too... Overall your tanks need to step it up i.m.o

Unless you're on about 3rd gate, then it's just the mechanics, the adds on that gate (except elites) fixate or w/e... just nuke.

I agree with openair. It's one thing to say "this is a difficult encounter" as people are doing what they can with the mistakes that are made and you just keep plugging along. It's something else if you can say "player X is at fault" because they continually lose threat, don't pick up adds, habitually stand in fire, etc. I'd be far, far more lenient on the first set of circumstances.

Example, tank is losing threat? I'd be looking to change things up after 3 tries. That doesn't mean permanently, but if I had someone else on standby or if I could switch out roles, I'd do it then. There's no way I'd get anywhere near 20, let alone 60-70. At that point either the tank is doing something seriously wrong or he's flat out undergeared compared to the DPS. Neither one has a happy ending, no matter how you slice it.

I am a semi hardcore. I know the fights and I know how to play my spec well enough to perform top 2 or 3 DPS regularly. Several other people in the group also play very well. I think it is mainly tank/healer issues. Specifically the tank/healer assigned to Horridon.
Don't get me wrong. I enjoy playing with this group. They are fun to play with but I want to down bosses and get geared for new content and this is hindering that.

I have to ask. You say the tank is losing aggro, and then in a later post you're saying the specific problem is with the tank/healer assigned to Horridon. So are you saying the tank assigned to Horridon is losing aggro? If that's the case, if it's at any of the doors, the dps is at fault; if it's after the doors (or even after the first, at the transition, assuming all adds are dead), it's the tanks fault.

I know my fellow guild players so good so that if we wipe on normal its almost always is something we have missed in the mechanic on the fíght. On Heroics its more of gear check in my opinion, specially if ure progressing early on.

Since ure saying "Usually due to tank not keeping threat or healer not keeping tank alive" I guess ure meaning Normal difficulty
In my guild we killed Horridon Normal on our third attempt the first week of ToT. We only raid 2 days a week aswell so I wouldnt say were hardcore at all.

rhandric, I suppose he could be referring to the offtank not picking up the adds; adds go wild, healer tries to help, MT gets smashed. In either case, it sounds like the tank is at fault.

Past that, PickmansMuse. Top DPS doesn't matter much. Top *damage* matters more and even that doesn't matter too much. Surround yourself with scrubs and check the meters; then ask yourself if it matters ;-)

If your tank and healers aren't doing there job well it's pretty much GG. The way tanks are built these days it's near impossible for a tank to lose threat unless the dps are 540 ilvl and the tank is 500, but even then tanks gen so much threat its crazy. Horridon is a tough fight if people aren't doing their jobs with dispelling, tank swapping, and dps tearing down the right adds. I don't know how your raid leadership is, but if you see someone or something failing I'd speak out after a few wipes. No harm in trying to help just don't be hardcore and try to take over.

I have to ask. You say the tank is losing aggro, and then in a later post you're saying the specific problem is with the tank/healer assigned to Horridon. So are you saying the tank assigned to Horridon is losing aggro? If that's the case, if it's at any of the doors, the dps is at fault; if it's after the doors (or even after the first, at the transition, assuming all adds are dead), it's the tanks fault.

I can not even conceptualize how the boss tank could possibly ever lose aggro on horridon.

Speaking as someone who just cleared Normal ToT a few weeks ago, my threshold is usually about 10, depending on circumstances. By that I mean 10 solid pulls with wipes at some point requires discussion of "What is going wrong". If you have a few "false start" pulls (think Dark Animus if someone's small golem gets linked, kills them, and then goes off running) then you just clarify what needs to be done.

I think the most wipes we've had were on Dark Animus (has to be close to 40, we still usually wipe at least 2-3 times on him now), and Lei Shen of course (easily over 40). Tortos has a few too (30+?) due to the mechanics. Without knowing specifically what the issue is on Horridon it's hard to pinpoint a solution, but I'd say if you are having 50-60 wipes, you need to sit back and figure out why and change it, either by changing people or if nothing else works changing guilds to one more competent. That's kind of a harsh statement to make but remember the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.

Well, FallNAngel, that's what I initially thought, but then he said that the fault lies on the Horridon tank/healer, which implies the opposite...hence, I'm asking for clarification (logs would be best, but w/e)

The raid leader needs to decide how confident he is in his strategy and his raid.

If he knows X, Y, and Z players are weaker than the rest, and those are the ones that are primarily responsible for the mistakes, then the RL might just decide to keep pushing on, hoping those players slowly get better.

If the RL isn't sure that the strategy for the fight is the best, then he needs to be able to make those decisions after minimal wipes and try something new. Most fights have multiple strategies and some work better for different groups, especially depending on comp and overall DPS.

I would not spend 60-70 wipes on Horridon without switching something, unless you simply know it is a player problem (as opposed to strategy, dps, healing, etc).

The only fight my guild has ever spent 50+ wipes without severely switching up a strategy or composition was heroic ragnaros, and that was because I knew we were using the best strategy we could and it simply came down to people executing the fight correctly. It is your responsibility as a raid leader to understand the fight well enough to figure out why you are wiping and whose fault it is, and be able to make those decisions between every few pulls.

Spending 60-70 wipes to the same normal mode boss is ridiculous, and I am guessing there is a bigger problem than tanks getting gibbed or healers not doing their job.

I have to ask. You say the tank is losing aggro, and then in a later post you're saying the specific problem is with the tank/healer assigned to Horridon. So are you saying the tank assigned to Horridon is losing aggro? If that's the case, if it's at any of the doors, the dps is at fault; if it's after the doors (or even after the first, at the transition, assuming all adds are dead), it's the tanks fault.

We tank Horridon away from the doors to prevent the DPS from pulling aggro. Occasionally one of us will get a charge from well outside of our range. More often the tank will get one shot from not moving out of double swipe or another ability. Sometimes the healer will say something like 'an ability didn't work'.
We wipe either on the first door, the fourth door, or on War God. In all pulls Horridon is on the opposite side of the Arena from the raid until the fourth door is finished.

The amount of pulls doesn't matter, the progress does. Do you see significant (Or even marginal) improvements regularly? Keep at it. If you don't? Change the tactic/Person who fails/yell at the nearest toaster.
Then again, I have a friend who barely raids, and would much rather just spend his raid times with a group of friends, having a laugh. Which, of course, is sometimes made harder by wiping excessively, but mostly it's down to the people you're playing with to make the time fun. Ask yourself which one you'd rather be.

rhandric, I suppose he could be referring to the offtank not picking up the adds; adds go wild, healer tries to help, MT gets smashed. In either case, it sounds like the tank is at fault.

Past that, PickmansMuse. Top DPS doesn't matter much. Top *damage* matters more and even that doesn't matter too much. Surround yourself with scrubs and check the meters; then ask yourself if it matters ;-)

I only threw the meter comment in to answer the question about my raider type. I think our raid damage as a group is fine.